MMM scheme makes shocking comeback

Financial site Fin24 is warning that MMM, the notorious online Ponzi scheme, may be trying to use a “Bitcoin-based currency” to make a comeback this year.

The scheme reportedly died last year but members were recently told on Facebook that “due to the recent sharp price fluctuations of Bitcoin, mavro-BTC is being introduced in the system”.

Members are currently still struggling to withdraw their money, with the scheme’s bosses telling them to be patient because the system is still being “updated”. It appears that they have lost their money in rands.

Fin24 reports that members trying to withdraw their old “rand-based mavros” will have no luck, as these were “reset” after the Ponzi scheme reached its threshold in 2016.

“MMM South Africa blamed its system’s crash on a media campaign to shut down the Ponzi scheme,” reports Fin24.

Many South Africans have complained of losing their money to the scheme and no one has allegedly been paid out since November.

MMM is now once again promising “30% growth” through the Bitcoin system.

МММ was a Russian company that perpetrated one of the world’s largest Ponzi schemes of all time in the 1990s. By different estimates, from 5 to 40 million people lost up to $10 billion. The exact figures are not known even to the founders. In 2011, MMM re-opened as “MMM Global” with up to 110 subsidiaries per country, and it became widely popular in various African countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Kenya.